YMMV / Star Wars: Ewok Adventures

---

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Some fans wonder if the Gorax is truly malicious and planned to eventually eat the Towani parents or saw itself as helping stranded travelers.
• Complete Monster: "King" Terak, also in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, was a brutal Sanyassan warlord who crash-landed upon Endor, destroying his dreams of plundering the galaxy. To vent his frustration, Terak promptly executed the one Sanyassan who could have navigated him out of Endor and resigned himself to decades of pillaging Endor, wiping out and enslaving entire Ewok villages out of sheer spite, torturing prisoners to death, and yearning for the day he could return to the stars. When a starship pilot who was captured by Terak revealed he had a crystal powerful enough to fuel an entire spaceship, Terak executed him so he could hunt for the crystal himself, in the process razing an entire village and murdering the entire family of the young child Cindel. Terak remorselessly tried to murder Cindel herself later, as well as all of her Ewok friends.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Grumpy old man Noa Briqualon is considered the best part of these films by many despite only appearing midway through the second film. Being played by the quintessential Grumpy Old Man in Wilford Brimley helped immensely.
• Epileptic Trees: Around the time that The Force Awakens came out, there was a popular fan theory that Cindel Towani grew up to become Captain Phasma.
• Funny Moments: In "Battle for Endor", as Charal brings Cindel before Terak. Charal bows and genuflects before Terak, while Cindel just looks around idly. Looking only mildly exasperated, Charal takes a moment to gently make Cindel bow before the warlord.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Go here.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Rearing spiders.
  • The cursed pond that traps you under its surface.
• Nightmare Retardant: The boar wolf that stalks the children at night in the first film is genuinely frightening as it does so. Then the next scene immediately shifts to daytime and the Eworks are fighting the creature, now plainly visible. The puppet and the stop motion effect for it do not look nearly as intimidating in this lighting.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Aubree Miller (Cindel) has been rehabilitated in more recent years now that young boys openly disliking young girl fronted TV shows and movies is more frowned upon by society than it was in The '80s, along with what she has to endure in the second film.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus on these films. They aren't really all that bad, certainly not compared to the legendary badness of The Star Wars Holiday Special, but they aren't really all that good either. It probably doesn't help that the Ewoks were already Base-Breaking Characters when they originally appeared in Return of the Jedi.
• Special Effect Failure: Granted, the effects are quite impressive by the standards of 1980s television, but still, every matte painting is obviously a matte painting, every blue-screen shot is obviously a blue-screen shot, and every stop-motion creature was obviously created with stop motion. Also, Terak's sword is obviously not made of steel, as shown by how much it wobbles when hit by Noa's staff.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Ewoks: The Battle for Endor is often considered a marginal improvement over the first movie.
• Tear Jerker: You know the bracelet Cindel got with lights representing her family members, to reassure her that they were alive? In the second film, each one goes out as her family — her mother, her brother and her father — is killed.
• The Woobie: Cindel, who loses her entire family at the start of Battle for Endor, and tearfully says goodbye to her father — who tells her to run to safety.

---